Online content – are you online on time?
Oh hey friends! Welcome to the 5th and FINAL blog post in my series about online content marketing and consumer engagement. We’ve looked at how to make online content easy to engage with. Then we explored how to make brand engagement more attractive to consumers. Last week, we looked at how to make engaging with content marketing a social experience. And today, we’re looking at the final element of EAST: timely.
Timely is about – you guessed it – engaging with consumers at the right time, in a way that is suitable for that particular time. Have I said time too many times?
Let’s get this show on the road – I’ve got a posting deadline to meet! 😉
Choose the right time to engage
Let’s leap right in. There are a couple of different elements to this – I’ll start with the most common and work my way up. One of the most frequent questions any marketing strategist or social media marketer is asked when they are putting together a strategic content marketing plan for a client is this:
What is the best time of day to post on social media?
Short answer: there is no single answer.
Every social media platform has different peak times to post in general. Then there are the peak times for your target audience, which may or may not be the same as the general times. You then need to consider whether the #hashtags associated with the topic you’re posting about are trending or falling flat – this can change by the minute.
Honestly? Test it out. Post at different times on different days and see which ones get the most engagement; not just likes or clicks, but also the post reach – that will tell you if the right / enough people are engaging. Why? Clever algorithms work out whether your online content is valuable enough to send to more people based on who and how often people are engaging with you now.
Your best strategy for online content marketing is always going to be regularly posting consistent quality content. Don’t be afraid to recycle posts, or post at different times (or different days) on different platforms. A good online marketing strategy will help you to work out when, where and what.
Which leads me to…
Bigger online timelines
Content marketing isn’t just about the day-to-day. You should also consider broader themes to make your content timely! Some pretty obvious examples are seasonal products, and products or services that align with certain holidays. So how can you incorporate this into your marketing campaign?
Create a marketing campaign around a holiday, or a season. If you have products or services that actually relate to that time of year, even better! Consumers respond to marketing campaigns that appear to be relevant to what’s happening right now. It doesn’t just have to be seasons or holidays – even something as simple as using a particular day of the week to launch a post will sometimes work.
A great example of this is how often brands (and, let’s face it, every single person on Instagram) use #friyay – making an obvious connection between the day of the week, how happy we all are that it is that day of the week, and then linking it to their brand somehow is all they (you) really need to do.
#throwbackthursday #tbt is another good example.
#EOFY
I could come up with more but honestly, I think you guys get it.
Arrange your engagement for times when it will help to solve a problem
This relates to the ‘time of year’ concept. If you have any kind of product or service that could be given as a gift, holidays are your #BFF4eva! Why? Because consumers have a perceived problem around holidays – they have to get people presents, and they don’t know what to buy. Enter – your product! Create a short campaign around every significant date in the calendar that incorporates your business somehow. That should give you a pretty solid list of online content to post at appropriate times. Just make sure you plan it out beforehand so that when the dates roll around, all you have to do is click ‘publish’.
Finally – timely responses
Have you ever noticed that you’re more likely to have a more extended conversation with someone when you get back to them quicksticks? That’s because they’re focussed on the topic at the time that they approach you about it, so they’re more likely to retain interest. The longer you leave it, the less likely it is that what you have to say is still going to be relevant to them.
It’s the same with consumer engagement. If people are interacting with your brand, go get ’em! Talk, communicate, respond – just engage back, in a timely manner. The most engagement from an online post is likely going to happen within the first 30 minutes of it being published. If you aren’t checking your comments and responding as they’re being made (within reason) then you’re likely missing out. When you engage back with your target market while they’re still hot for the conversation, that’s when the magic happens.
That’s all, folks!
There you have it – the building-blocks of how to apply EAST behavioural insights to increase consumer engagement in your online content marketing campaign. I hope you’ve found this useful (or at least, a bit interesting).
Of course, there are heaps of other ways that you can engage your target market, and no one method is ever going to work for everyone. There are so many different options out there, so many new and exciting ways of engaging with people. So don’t limit yourself!
If you’re lost or strapped for time, it really is worth talking to a strategic marketing specialist who can point you in the right direction.
Lucy out! xo
I’d love some feedback – honest! Let me know what you think, or drop me a line if you have any questions about content marketing and the ways a tailored online marketing strategy could help you!
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